TomTom GO 740 Live PND Offers Everything but Kitchen Sink

TomTom announced the GO 740 Live this morning, a personal navigation device that offers TomTom’s latest IQ Routes, along with wireless real-time traffic feeds, local search, and more. We had the pleasure of going hands-on with the device last night, and we’re pleased with what we’ve seen so far.

The Go 740 Live measures 3.4 x 5 x 0.9 inches in size and weighs just 7.9 ounces. It has a 4.3-inch, 480 x 272-pixel resolution touchscreen, 2GB of internal memory, and Bluetooth for hands-free calling. Its built-in SIM card support and GPRS modem keep it connected for updates, but more importantly, for Google search and traffic information.

More details and a hands-on video after the break.

TomTom’s IQ Routes automatically calculates the fastest route depending on the time of day you’re driving. This information is taken from a database of stored historical travel data over the past two years across 1.8 trillion miles of road. TomTom told us this means if you’re used to taking Main Street every day on your way to work, but it’s always flooded with traffic at 8 a.m., the device will automatically route you down side roads to avoid that traffic.

Thanks to its GPRS receiver, the device can grab live traffic every 2 to 5 minutes along your route. It will then suggest an alternate route to help save time. TomTom offers this service free for the first year, but hasn’t yet announced the subscription rates that will follow.

The Go 740 Live also supports Google Search using its two-way wireless data connection. This will allow drivers to search for points of interest along the route across 11 million businesses. The results will provide both the location and the phone number, and using the Bluetooth sync drivers can place calls directly from the unit.

Other features include TomTom Weather for five-day forecasts, fuel prices across 120,000 different gas stations, TomTom Buddies, which lets you link your device to a friend to stay up to date on their location or send texts through the devices, and QuickGPSfix for grabbing a GPS connection quickly. Finally, the GO 740 Live offers a new user interface with lane guidance, voice recognition, and map sharing for updating devices to share with the TomTom community. Voice recognition lets you speak 130 different commands to the device, to have it automatically take you home, or check the traffic.

The Go 740 Live will set you back $499 and will be available at major retailers in the second quarter of 2009. We can’t wait to do a full review of this feature-packed (albeit pricey) device.